2026-02-02: Sweetcrisp

• Log: Sweetcrisp
• Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara, Umie Akabane
• Where: Shibuya Ward, Tokyo
• OOC Date: 2026-02-02
• IC Date: Sep 22 2012
• Summary: Umie, despite all of her better judgment, is adventurous enough to invite the notorious Shiryuu Ryouhara to a local farmer's market. It definitely isn't a date, and it definitely goes well.

---

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        There's been a part of Umie's mind that still drifts to that night on the rooftop of her apartment.

        How many people could say that'd feel that comfortable feeling asleep under the light of a yellow-green moon, in a position that would be wholly exposed and dangerous? Shadows can climb and fly.

        It just didn't seem to matter, as her eyelids lowered and fluttered shut, her head growing heavy against Shiryuu's shoulder.
        It didn't even matter when she woke up with a sore neck and Shiryuu likely briefly immobilized, having spent the night stuck in that pose.
        It definitely didn't matter when they complained at each other for how dangerous it was to fall asleep out in the open during the Dark Hour.

        Even with the upcoming art show created by Tatsuya Sudou, Maria Sakurai's disappearance, and Kazusa Motojima's atelier... her thoughts still wander.

        "... Bwuh?" Umie looks up from looking up at the clock, disturbed from her reverie by her boss. "... Right, right."

        goddamn it, shiryuu's getting into her head again, that's totally screwing up her ability to do this extremely monotonous, thankless task!!

        ... she should call him.
 
        ---------

        This is not a date. This is, by no means, a date. She just thought Shiryuu would appreciate some shopping with her. Normal people shop all the time, for fruit, and he's encouraged her to not eat konbini food all the time.

        Umie is just buying apples. From Aomori. Aomori apples. There's many different varieties. It is *not* a date.

        There's a farmer's market in Shimokitazawa that's rumored to have quite a few varieties.

        Did she pay attention to her hair a little bit more? Her makeup? Her clothing? Yes. But that's because it's just a tad bit cooler today, and she wanted to wear something that suited the weather! Some nice khakis, the bottoms rolled up just so, a red tank top, a cotton button-up blouse, some matching armcuffs, and her usual red charm bracelet and hairband.

        Umie checks her phone; she's early here. Nervously early. If he decides not to show up, that's fine, she'll get apples. And she'll eat one of every variety and see which ones fare the best. Perfect.

        Umie adjusts her hairbuns just... one more time.


<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
 
        "--Iiihh!! How could you fall asleep so easily!! What do you mean I did as well -- it's impossible, I merely used peerless focus to slow my heartrate down and lull enemies into a false sense of security! -- _I do not snore!_ Akabane, this sacrilege will not go unanswered. Help me up, so that I may censure you. NO, I can get up on my own! WH-- I do not want to hold your hand! It's just conven... you twin bunned devil!! ..."

        ..or such is how it went. Something like. And so on, and so forth, with the shihaisha angrily inchworming all over the roof to prove his independence.

        At what point would the onmitsu care to mention that it had actually been the only time he had slept longer than an hour or two in the past month? At what point would he even realize it, somewhere between the long, neon-painted interludes of staring in abject obsession at the walls until his head threatened to split between his hands?

        No. It was just a temporary state. A problem to be solved. It was his absolute charge as the strongest that kept him going, forced the iron into his hands as he finished cutting the girder, lifting the heavy section away.

        There's really only one thought that made the nights any shorter.

        I JUST FEEL, RHYTHM EMOTION~ ..

        Startled out of his own mindspace, the boy swathed in layers of wool and scarves looks up at the cream white phone, a golden four pointed star on the flip case and the letters EFSF. It repeats, the tinny sound of the MP3 ringtone filling the room that felt far too small. Through the creases in his fingers, Shiryuu peered at the phone with one bloodshot eye as it merrily vibrated across the desk.

        ... slowly, he remembers who the ringtone was assigned to.

        "!!!" The boy almost vaults off of the floor.

        "WH... hhh..." He pauses, swallows, his mind spinning.
        "....hey," the onmitsu manages.
        "...where are you?"

        --------

        It was, for the record, exceedingly hard to convince Shiryuu that she was not speaking in code, she was not in any danger, and for him not to show up fully armed.

        At first, it was easy to imagine he ditched entirely, as the onmitsu isn't anywhere to be seen. But, being this early, it's hard to tell what kind of person Shiryuu is -- it's easy to imagine the shihaisha of Ryouhara to be the relentlessly early type. But perhaps he's simply punctual. Is he a late sleeper all the time, or is it just...

        "...you look nice."

        The voice originates from somewhere to the side of Akabane and ... up.

        It's impossible to tell for the first few moments exactly how long the boy had been waiting for her, his fingertips slowly flexing out spare energy against his knees. Cargo pants are held up by a snug belt and a hip pack that is absolutely not at all suspiciously behind his right side for easy access. His cargos are sharply tailored to drape over the instep of a pair of black and gold ASICS gel sneakers from last year's Atmos collections and somewhat true to form, he's wearing a deep hunter green wool turtleneck. Not a wrinkle to be seen for miles, save for the sole discretion he shows, a pertly folded white jacket tied around his waist does a poor job of hiding the hip pack, and lord knows what else. A set of matching pendant jade earrings match the energy.

        More importantly, he's sitting on the roof of a nearby stall. There is a chicken down below that has elected to take offense, and is staring at him with barely constrained disapproval. Her owner is nowhere to be seen.

        "...." Shiryuu, stop staring at Akabane.

        "...ah," he remembers himself. "... I ..."
        He taps his barely-exposed fingertips together, slowly.
        It's fine. Akabane said it wasn't a date. Right? Did she? It was very vague. ".... I scouted the vendors already," he decides to say. "It should be safe for ...us here."

        Why did he have so much trouble saying that?


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
 
        Umie may or may not have made things harder on the two of them, with her tendency to slip into sarcastic bits of humor at a moment's notice. 'You never know, farmer's markets are incredibly dangerous nowadays... all that produce, just lying around... someone might get the wrong idea--'

        But she manages to hold back, for Shiryuu's sake (as well as hers).

        And now, he's come, his voice coming from an angle she would have only expected if it had been another time or place, be it some sort of supernatural field, or the Dark Hour. No, it's daylight, and the Badb in her is, at best, restless for action, due to the current lack of any.

        Umie scans around, then thinks to look up, a brief bewilderment on her face at Shiryuu's location before she quickly masks it. Warm brown eyes gather in how he's dressed, as well as the sheer difference of it.

        He looks... really nice. Did he wear this, for her? .... Wait, no. _This is not a date, she insisted on it_. He can wear whatever he wants, she'll just accept him as he is.

        ..... the earrings look really nice with the turtleneck though UMIE NO

        "You... look nice too," Umie allows herself to say, quietly. "... I like your earrings." He's worn ones like them before.

        It just felt... okay to compliment them.

        "Now, can you please get down from on top of the stall? You're going to stick out." Nevermind she was doing something similar the other day, hunching over a neon light in a wartorn cyberpunk city locale.

        There's a time and place for being a little extra! Farmer's market would be more for the 'busking something that was never meant to be played on your instrument' sort of extra.

        'It should be safe for ...us here.'

        She should say 'thank you, for looking out for you and I'. She's even thinking it, a little.

        But Umie cannot be Umie if she is not being Umie.

        "Yes, those deadly apple vendors." Umie's lips split in a sharp grin, tapping a deep wine-colored fingernail to her chin. "... I hear the apple orchards sneak a poison apple or two in every batch, as a their sacrifice to the apple god. The blood of the fallen to color the apples for next year... Or so they say..."

        She pauses a moment, just long enough, before deploying a coy, "... Just kidding." UMIE THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN CLEAR AT THE GET-GO

        also stop letting Akechi be a terrible influence, it just encourages him from afar

        "Shall we? Maybe we'll find some pears, too." When *is* pear season, anyway....?


<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        The boy's asymmetrically dark brown eyes fix on Akabane with idle intensity as he trails off into a silence that feels more awkward to him than it is. She may note that he frequently looks like that, and it has a smoothing effect on his nerves, slowing the tapping of his fingertips.

        She's saying something. She's complimenting him?

        Shiryuu blinks, as if not paying attention.
        "Ihh," the boy vocalizes, his eyes narrowing in a hazy, confused expression. She... likes how he looks? Is that a thing? What does it mean? A hundred possibilities cross his mind in fast relief, none of which are the fact that he just said as much too. It's fine if he compliments her. The other way around though? Is that even okay? "...it's fine," Shiryuu decides to say.

        Then makes a face, when he realizes it only makes sense to him.

        'Now can you please get down?' The boy blinks. Luckily, his eye seems to be in much better shape than it was in times prior, otherwise he might have blinked it to bleeding again. "Oh, right..."

        The boy jumps down and is immediately attacked. "!"

        Hanzoko pecks him in the leg, hard, the moment he's on the ground level, wings stretching ominously. Shiryuu, naturally, is too busy with Umie's safety to notice the direct tangible threat to his own, and the boy almost falls in indecision when he has the option of dodging out of the way or keeping himself between the aggressor and Akabane. This does not go well, for the next twenty seconds.

        "--hh, no, what are you -- ow! Aren't you a hen -- ow! go, shoo, don't make me destroy yo-- ow!"

        Luckily, Shiryuu thinks fast on his feet, and moves a long sign to block the stall, nudging the angry hen behind it to be disapproving of him on her own time. He is dusting his pants off by the time Umie's fun with his attention to detail registers. Somewhat accordingly, he's stuck staring at her nails by the time her words find their way to the back of his mind, where he left all of his thoughts.

        "Yeah, they're a nice color," Shiryuu says at first, eyes noticeably pointed downward, only looking up by the time Umie lifts her hands to her lips to smile. "....ah.."

 'Those deadly apple vendors..' "You're a high value target, though," he objects, before trailing off. It's natural to check the area for threats with that in mind. Right? That's what an 'aegis of protection' is all about. Why is she even!

        He is struggling to catch up, between the attack and the absurdity of poison sacrifice to apple gods. "I have a resistance to metabolic poison... wh.." ..at are you even talking about.. Shiryuu's head lifts, his earrings swaying pointedly as his mouth sets in a thin pressed, nettled line.

        "...you're an impossible woman, Akabane.."

        The possibility of pears, at least, seems to repair his grimace significantly. "You're right," he thinks. "... they should have pear juice here," he decides.

        Absently, the young man raises an open hand to Akabane, gesturing once, twice, crisply for her hand. He's already turning away, so the boy is clearly busy making important decisions.

        Feel free to guess which ones involve thinking at all.
 

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        "Of course it's fine," Umie answers back with a laugh, beckoning the boy down with a pawing motion. "What, are you not used to a compliment like that? Or is it because it came from me?"

        Indeed, she's noticed; while Shiryuu's eyes focus on Umie, it's simplistic to say that he's just distracted; it's as if he finds something that softens that constant hyperalert state of his, something Umie wonders if she can correctly call 'anxiety'. ... Maybe she's just laying the mantle of her own emotions on Shiryuu, in an attempt to make him seem anything but a danger to her, due to that evergreen present of the NWO behind him.

        Speaking of dangers: chikken

        "...." In the presence of danger, Umie's senses activate. Pupil size changes, posture shifts, expression tightens, fingers splay.

        Well, okay, nevermind, it's a chicken, and Shiryuu seems like he wants to handle it himself, so she'll just record scratch on that and watch the Ryouhara prince deploy his vast ocean of skills and knowledge against the might and ancient dinosaur instincts of the hen.

        (okay nevermind the apples, this is actually kind of fun to watch)

         With the chicken dealt with, Umie gives a polite clap. "My knight in shining armor." She even sounds a little impressed: it *is* a freely roaming, angry chicken. "Probably got lost from one of the other stalls," she says, yawning into her hand. "Man, I hate getting up this early..." She pauses, mid-yawn, then blinks, realizing Shiryuu is looking at her nails. With a proud little grin, she displays them out to him, turning her hand so that the slight sheen of the red catches in the light. "Pretty, isn't it?"

        'You're a high value target, though,' he says, trailing off. Umie's scythe-like smile intensifies as he reiterates her impossible-ness, which pairs well with those merry, crinkling eyes. "Of course I am. Will you be the one to save me from all the dangers that await me? If I fall into the hands of the enemy, how will you get to use me to your ends?"

        She remembers he said something like that, once-- that he needed something from her. Or did she misremember? (When did her feelings towards him become something different...?)

        As Shiryuu gestures crisply for her hand, while he coincidentally looks away, Umie tilts her chin, amused. Raising her hand, she slips it onto Shiryuu's own.

        Not a date. Not at all.

        The stalls bear a variety of different items, especially fresh produce. Plenty of apples from apple orchards, including many from Aomori Prefecture. Ranging from deep reds like Umie's fingernails, to pale golden yellows, it's still early in the apple season, limiting the varieties to the ones that are only available in September. Umie is distracted, once the allure of the giant apples and the sweet scent of produce no longer feels new.

        .... She's looking for pear juice.

        "Mmn. There's a stall that's selling nashi pears, but no pear juice, just yet. Want to buy some?"


<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        Yes, the chicken problem is dealt with, and Shiryuu is reasonably sure the hen angrily peering at him from the gap inbetween the sign and a wedged stool is evidence of a neutralized threat. More importantly, it gives him something to focus on other than her smile; the boy's prickly imperiousness settles exactly on the crossroads between 'confused,' 'suspicious' and 'shy' when Umie makes a few educated guesses as to his staid reaction against being complimented.

        "It's not like that," he objects, trying very, very hard to focus on the moment. "I just..."

        Things do not go well from there, as the master shinobi is completely sidetracked when his co-conspirator decides to show off a little with a flash of color and a scythe-wide grin. The boy's pupils dilate as his attempts to answer even one question fall by the wayside, just as more questions arise. It is absolutely in the smallest voice the onmitsu murmurs. "So many shades," he says, more to himself than anything else. "It's different from the color when you.."

        When she first put her hand on his shoulder.

        "...I ... they're good," he says, because simply agreeing with her would let her do as she likes, and right now Shiryuu really needs to focus. She keeps saying things, and ...

        Immediately after, Shiryuu is intensely scandalized. He almost managed to ignore being referred to as a knight until the bunned demon drives the dagger home. 'Will you be the one to save me from all the dangers that await me? If I fall into the hands of the enemy, how will you get to use me to your ends?'

        "!!"

        "AH-- that's not even fair," Shiryuu complains, lifting his chin proudly, and looking up and -away-, not giving her the satisfaction of paying attention to how hot his cheeks feel. "It was about our --" that's not right. "We--" NOPE that's not the right word to use right now. "It sounds bad like that, but isn't even like --" nope, she won't let that stand either. "Iiiih. I, it's like you yearn for destruction, Akabane...!"
        The boy trails off, his lips sealing tight in exasperation. Hands up, and palms together, with a single chop forward as if slicing a loaf of bread on a high table right in half decisively. The only way to recover is to restart this entire conversation from the beginning.

        "...I'm too powerful for compliments to be effective against me," he says, completely non-sequitur to the conversation as it's progressed. He says it with conviction, power, and absolute focus.

        It sounds right to him right up until he says it.
        Shutting his eyes, the onmitsu frowns, deeply mortified.

        "Come on. We need to go." He turns, eager to be done with the entire line of thinking. He grabs her hand without thinking and abruptly marches off into the market, leaving the hen to promptly hopflutter over the sign and tail the two the moment she's left unobserved.

        Shiryuu manages to get roughly ... 100 yards and maybe six or seven minutes into the stalls before he realizes that despite having a detailed map of the market not even ten minutes ago, he has absolutely no idea where he's going or what he was actually looking for. "....."

        His hand tightens on hers lightly as he looks around at an entire rainbow of fruit. Left, right. He finally realizes he's not actually been looking at anything. "...um." He tries to say it quietly, so she doesn't hear. What was he even after before? Was it something to do with Aomori?

        Ohh, she has been looking at the apples, hasn't she?
        That's why he hasn't been paying attention to where he was going. She reminds him that he was looking for pear juice, and that there isn't any. "...ah?" Blink.

        "...oh..."

        He's holding her hand. Wait.
        The onmitsu's eyebrows rise beyond the eclipse of his grey hair. "I ... it's fine," he says, again, as if it made sense the first time. "We should get ... some apples for you," he says, thinking very hard about exactly how quiet he needs his voice to be, and exactly how hard to absently stare at an unrelated vendor who is definitely not being freaked out by his intensity.

        He's being very careful with his words, now.
        "Which do you like most?"


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
 
        "Oh?" Umie's smile hinges on the end of smug, like a cat that's caught a mouse underneath its paw. Does it let it go, or does it fling the mouse into the air to start the chase once more? Does it kill?

        'So many shades. It's different from the color when you...' Umie blinks, momentarily dumbfounded, as her fingers pause in that momentary tilting position. "... Yeah, the polish isn't meant to hold up against all the things I do. Also, sometimes, change is good." She's been looking for that color, ever since. Not because of that event, but because it's a shade of red she liked, and right now, she can't find it anywhere. "... Is there a color you like?"

        Umie's not even smiling like she usually does, like she's laying a trap. She seems genuinely curious.

        Like sakura flowers in spring, that soft question is empheral, leading to the brassy heat of summer.
        
        "Ahh... so you wanted to use me, but your heart intervened..." Umie murmurs quietly; they're among others in public, she's not about to break the casual allure of a couple walking through the farmer's market, hand in hand. "You took pity on my frail, innocent maiden self..." She lowers her eyelashes, playfully fluttering them just so as she angles her gaze up towards him, whether he's trying to look away or not. "Or am I a witch, who's enchanted your heart? Or maybe I'm a thief, who's stolen it instead..." She giggles, near the end there, as a frowning middle-aged woman who happened to overhear the conversation gives her a disapproving side eye. "Sorry, you just looked so serious there that I couldn't resist."
        
        He's too powerful for compliments to be effective. "So, if I want to pay you a compliment," Umie begins, revisiting that devious smile of hers, "I'll need to hide it. Got it. You'll never see it until it's too late."

        She's... chatty, Umie thinks, as she slows her own chatter down. Is she... having fun? Is her own heart beating a little faster as well? This isn't a date.

        After all, they're not here for dates, but for apples--

        Huh. Where are they, again? Did they just pass several stalls and not even really look at any of them?
        
        "Which ones." Umie reasserts her control of the situation, but instead of being coy, she gives another answer instead. "It's always different, each year. Different memories." Last year, she felt alone, despite having so many things many around her didn't: home, family, friends, a weak but passable future, stability. She gave it all up for the costs that she felt came with it, and all the downsides. Maybe, she would have come along the same path, if she still lived at home. It just doesn't feel like she would have been able to break completely free if she was still tethered to that house.

        She definitely wouldn't be holding Shiryuu's hand, right now. "... I want to see which one it'll be this year."

        Her hand, clasped around his, tightens just a little, her cheeks growing hot. Maybe, the next year it won't feel this way, or the next. "The first year I've been on my own. It'll have a clean taste, very crisp, I think."
 

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        At some point, Shiryuu is going to get his affairs in order, but for the moment, the boy is trying very hard not to look at Akabane too much, the onmitsu training his laser like attention on the stall vendor until the man finds a way to get out of his direct line of sight by stepping behind a draping sign. Somewhat predictably, the boy doesn't notice.

        "....oh.." he realizes he's being asked a question, his voice faraway despite himself. Eyes finally break their spell with a blink or two, and the vendor is free to have the run of his stall again. He looks down, his thoughts trickling in one by one around the idea.

        His favorite color? Like... "You mean, not of the ones..?" The ones she wore. He absolutely does not keep track, and absolutely doesn't have a favorite. But. He doesn't think that's what she was asking. "... my favorite color?"

        "....."
        The boy doesn't actually seem to know. Was it because he had one, and forgot? Or ... did he ever have a favorite color? Was it because he couldn't decide? The question whirls in his head momentarily, and it's only when his eyes lift from the ground and he returns to her face that 'an answer' comes to him.

        "Ah... if you're wearing it, I think it should be my favorite," Shiryuu replies, stealing a glance of her current color before looking at her underneath the cut of his brow. His voice is small, his eyes are soft; and he's not smiling when he says it.

        He isn't well equipped to say much more than that, at least until she threatens him, and the boy's lips purse to say flatly to her a single, tiny sound: 'pff.'

        A featherlight breath, sharp as a needle. "Don't misunderstand, Akabane," he definitely deals better with things that sound like threats. His previous discomfort forgotten, he continues. "You're definitely one hundred years too early to make off with anything of mine..."

        But Shiryuu doesn't rancor for very long at his bunned devil of a shopping partner, and she enjoys his undivided attention, the boy watching her closely as she muses. He doesn't even notice the disapproving hen in the distance that's slowly getting closer. Really, Shiryuu only seems to break and notice when Umie becomes uncomfortable, when her hand tightens in his own. A single blink, two. "...ohh." A feeling, connected to the season...

        "...ano, Umie. .."
        ...he trails off.

        ...and squeezes her hand back, soothingly, before turning her hand in his, with one slow pat. A little look of intensity flashes in the boy's brown eyes. "... we should definitely find you one that suits you then." Decisive, the boy switches gears, pointing at the closest vendor. Those apples are yellow! He might not even be aware of what type they even are. "Iiieh, excuse me! We need help. My -- she would like to try one of your crispest. Gold is a strong color for apples, right? Please, spare no expense. I'll accept nothing less but the very best experience...!"

        It's him being friendly. Kind of. In a very aggressive way.


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
 
        Maybe Umie is reading too much into it. Still.... what is it, that draws Shiryuu's face to look at her, and draws his thoughts away? Is it the thrill of being on a (not)date, or something else?

        "... Hey... is... everything okay? We can take a break, if you want."

        Her face angled towards him the way that it is, it's hard to miss that small frown of concern on her face.

        "Unless, of course--" She'll let it pass, if to preserve the onmitsu's honor, "this is because you think I'm trying to get a specific answer out of you. Or trying to trick you. Even if it's a color I've never worn before, I'd love to try something--"

        '....if you're wearing it...' That line *should* make Umie regard him sarcastically. Really? _Really_?

        ... It's just that this is Shiryuu, a person Umie would never mistake as someone who makes needless, meaningless compliments, especially when he looks like that. For a brief moment, her cheeks grow warm.

        How can his eyes look so soft like that...? "You sound like you got that from a book," she says, instead.

        ...
        
        A hundred years too early, huh... Umie gives him a lopsided smirk and a tilt of her head, brown eyes glinting. "... Which means I'd be the first, if I succeed? Even better."

        It's a romantic concept, one Umie wonders if, by allowing it, she's entertaining disaster. Icy fingertips at the back of her neck, the whispers.

        I wonder how you'll look in white...

        '...ano, Umie. ..' Shiryuu says, trailing off.
 
        Will you cry at the end, just like she did?

        Shiryuu's hand squeezing hers jolts her back. "....!"

        'We should definitely find you one that suits you then.' What?

        An apple. He's looking for an apple. Searching, drowning in an arena he has no expertise in.

        "AH, yes, we have some Kiou apples here! Very crisp, just a bit of tang to offset the sweetness!" Umie, broken from her daze, closes her fingers around one apple and holds it up in her left hand, curling her fingers around it and letting it sit in her half-covered hand.

        "... This one. Let's try this one," she says, with a dazed tone.


<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        It takes Shiryuu a moment to even figure out what Umie is talking about. When she asks if he needs to take a break, he first blinks, then his face becomes an open question, lips pursed and brow tilted in an affect of vague alarm. Is something...?

        Instinctively, Ryouhara blinks twice, then touches the lower orbit of his eye with a fingertip, examining it self-consciously. Passing muster, the boy steals a tiny stare at her; something knotted up between distress and guilt flashing in his eyes.

        What is going on? He's not paying attention like he really should to the situation at hand; his focus is not as sharp as it should be. While it's entirely apropos to say he's aware of the discrepancies -- the fact that she can even tell at all is an open matter of concern to Ryouhara.

        Get it together, Shiryuu. Half of a person is of no use to anyone.

        "....." Shiryuu's eyes narrow at her, as a shining smile crosses his face, the most accommodating flash of light he can muster in the moment. Fast, sharp, warm. "...ah," he objects lightly, more sound than words. That smile is radiant.

        'You sound like you got that from a book.' He would laugh at that; instead, the boy puts a hand through his hair. "I ..." mm. "Would it be easier if I.." pause. That doesn't sound right.

        "...It's fine," he says, finally. He doesn't need anything, his words say without saying. "Try all you like. I won't let you trick me so easily." There's no real aggression the way he speaks; and if he were any other person, one could accuse him of trying to tease her. But instead, the onmitsu tilts his head, the lower of his earrings touching the thick wool of his sweater. "I like ... mm... gold?" He's still smiling.

        His hand is snug holding hers, and he's been looking at the apple stand by now with focus, determination. Whatever it is, he's determined for it not to matter. Not like...

        He doesn't miss when she startles at him -- and his touch is meant to give her something to focus on other than the loneliness he knows she's felt. This is something the boy accounts for -- his strength will be enough, and he tilts his jawline up at the vendor, taking the lead to cover for her. "Hooh..." the boy remarks.

        "Kiou! A fine type," Shiryuu crows, pretending like he knows at all what those are. "A strong, powerful harvest starts in the heart, I suppose," he says. "But, you're not to show us any fruit mercy...! Our taste buds are ready to be decimated. Oh, right."

        Shiryuu almost forgets. He reaches behind, to his hip pack, which surprisingly is NOT entirely full of knives, bombs and shuriken, but also has his cash. He takes -great- care in opening his billfold with his teeth, handing over expertly folded notes with a single hand. "mmnf mf."

        He's actually quite good at doing things one-handed. Just not talking with his mouth full.
        He also overpaid. And he entirely forgot to buy a -second- apple for himself.
        He can be forgiven; he's got other affairs to worry about, right now.


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        Something is definitely happening here. When did it start? He's definitely not going to tell her.

        Was it the time when he told her he was afraid he'd never see her again? Which was the day he had revealed himself to have survived his attack on the Joker Killer.

        It'll take more than a radiant smile, now that Umie's finally gotten past her own bullshit to try to seek the truth in Shiryuu.

        But first... she'll have to keep him from making a single stall filthy rich because _someone's_ not bothering to look at the amount of money they're flashing.

        "Oh hey, you don't need to..." Her lips smooth out in a firm, definite line as she reaches a hand over to her purse, opening her billfold. "Another one, of the same variety," she says, to the confused vendor.

        "Some of those, too: two of the Tsugaru, and Natsumidori, as well." At the very least, it's got her mind off of a certain being's coy words.
        
        Before Shiryuu can object, and before he could try to get their trajectory changed, Umie asserts control herself, taking the paper bag of apples, as well as two plastic knives and some napkins in one arm, while the other remains affixed to Shiryuu's own, her grip firm.

        -----------

        At the most isolated picnic table Umie can find, she attempts to sit Shiryuu down, then begins setting out napkins.

        She busily tries to use a plastic knife to cut slices from each, almost as if to soothe the onmitsu into believing this (not)date is just about apples.

        "Hey," she starts, quietly, her eyes glancing up towards Shiryuu's own.

        "What's going on?"

        She'll give him a chance, before she attempts to seek the truth of the matter herself with a far more direct course.
 

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        "....?"

        His hands are flat at the table, and he is acutely aware of the way his fingers curl lightly and flex in response to her question; his head inclining slightly as he meets her glance, with all of the grave weight and authority of the shihaisha.

        He's dimly aware of what transpired in the last handful of minutes, of course. He would have to be, objectively speaking -- he was there for most of it.

        He remembers most clearly the objection he had, partway between relieved and aggressed upon when Akabane buys an apple for him. "Mmf!" he remembers complaining in the background, his billfold still in his mouth as he's all but drug away by the hand.

        To his merit, he notices they have a tail at that point. Less to his merit, he's at a disadvantage about the whole affair with his mouth full and being pulled away. He flails, a little, in a direction, but there's quite a bit going on, and by the time he's got his cash (he dropped a few bills and some kids -- hey! th-- wait, the confusion it generates is perfect --) more importantly -- "Don't be fooled--!" he calls after the confused vendor as Umie marches him away.

        "T, this doesn't mean anything!" he recalls declaring. "I know those apples too! I'm the strongest--!"

        Things are a little hazy, from there, truth told, as the boy is all but abducted with brutal efficiency, and is aware only of a row of stalls, turns, an isolated table tucked away with one or two more behind a batch of stalls. Shady, in the way the autumn should only be. Shiryuu had very little agency to object, if he recalled, more than completely lost, and focused only on the feel of her firm grip on his hand, his own an instinctive attachment completely absent of conscious thought.

        Try as she might, her hands were still softer than anything he'd ever known.
        Is this what ... a bond feels like?

        But now his hands are empty, and Shiryuu's skin prickled somewhere underneath his clothes, as if subconsciously expecting rain. He was vaguely aware that it bothered him more than he expected, but he tried not to tap his fingers or fidget, while watching her cut into the apples.

        He remembers saying something about having a knife, if she needed one.

        'Hey, what's going on?'

        Shiryuu blinks, his attention sharpening into the now. The gravity of the moment weighs into him slowly, and the boy lowers his head, holding her eyes evenly and trying not to be distracted by the way she handles a knife. He .. is strong.

        His expression is neutral, not unpleasant, but hardly the polished smile of a moment before.

        "ah ... you seemed distressed," the shihaisha explains simply, eyes dim. "I couldn't let that person notice, so it was necessary to enforce my ultimate order upon him.... that's all. Protecting you is part of my will, so it's to be expected. If it was too fearsome.. I'm sorry."

        His fingertip makes the tiniest, faintest sound on the table beneath his hands as a fingernail scrapes idly at the wood.


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
 
        It's not like he hasn't been like this earlier. He's always been pompous, like he's been raised to believe something more of himself, while also being taught how to exert his belief on others.

        Alas, Shiryuu won't come clean immediately.

        "See, at first, I thought you--" were feeling like she was? No, don't say THAT, Umie, say something more direct "--were just... uh..." She motions with her plastic knife idly. "That you were feeling like...."
        
        She blushes, and forces herself to muster onwards.

        "First off," she begins, despite it *not* being the first point she's making, "you don't need to prove yourself as being the strongest at anything, Shiryuu." She doesn't even realize she's being so direct in how she's addressing him; it *was* what Shiryuu told her to call him, after all, no alternations.

        But here, it's direct for a reason. "I just want to know if you're holding something back yourself. If it's just who you really are, and I've just never noticed until now, that's okay too."

        She wants to make that part clear too; she doesn't want to lose the parts of him that have shown such kindness to her, or such... vulnerability.

        "I just want to make sure it's not because of, well..."

        She notices the way his fingernail scrapes at the wood. Lips tighten.

        "You confronted the Old Maid because I told you that he attacked me, once, right? In spite of everything I told you about him, you still sought him out."

        Just like something she'd do, she realizes, grimly. She's always taking on tasks like that, refusing to listen when she's told it's not something she needs to take on.

        Her hands abandon the plastic knife in the first yellow-green apple, going to set over his own, encapsulating them in the coolness of her own.

        "I'd be a hypocrite, if I said I wouldn't do the same. But that doesn't mean I can't turn away from the consequences of my actions." If he allows his hands to be held in the first place. Unlike that night when they fell asleep on the roof, he'd see and feel the bands of cloth that cover her lower hand and upper wrist, camouflaging the mark of her childhood sin on her right wrist.

        "Is it fear? Or..."

        She leans in, slightly moving her body to the edge of her seat, so that her upper half is better able to ask him a specific question, as well as to hear his answer.

        'They took something from me,' she told Tsumugi once, in more or less those words, and here, she borrows those words, not realize he connection her brain is beginning to make.

        ".... What did he take from you?" She'd be expecting an analogy of course; never would she expect his answer to be literal.

        'Tell me, so I can wrestle it back from him.' She doesn't say it, but it's told in the way her lips purse and her eyes narrow, underneath the blonde strands of hair that drape over her face.


<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        Shiryuu's natural mien is not that of an aggressive person. He doesn't prefer having to levy his will. And like most, the misery is not something he enjoys. But at the same time, 'a smile' is not what he prefers to wear.

        It's much easier to lose yourself in the rhythm, he thinks, to search for something beneath it all. This is how he treats her, in that moment -- the boy watches Umie closely, his lips softening, his expression a low, lost line across his face. If he blinks while she's trying to pick out her thoughts, it's only the winds of his curiosity, buffeting gently across the table.

        What was she going to say before...?

        But there's much more to her than the fruit split and laid across the table between them, and it's that recognition of the true direction of her questions that has him set at such a distinct unease, leaving him to worry at the table with fingernails, pulling up tiny threads of wood absently.

        'You don't need to prove you're the strongest at anything.'
        Absolutely not.

        The shihaisha's shoulders rise nigh imperceptibly in the volume of his sweater, and the objection begins nigh immediately with all of the gravity of a sword being drawn. "It's because there isn't any question to that --" he begins, quickly scanning the length of the table tersely, his grey hair immediately shuttering over his eyes. "I am the ruler of --"

        There exists a combination of words somewhere that that shinobi can use, to make her understand that he's of value, and his word is law, and his strength is incontrovertible, and --

        'If it's just who you really are, and I've just never noticed until now, that's okay too.'

        "-- iieh, but, it's not like I'm --" the only thing that keeps the edge from the shihaisha's voice is that it's too small, too quiet, echoing inside of his own head as he attempts to outthink both her and himself. It's fine, if he just thinks about it enough -- what does she mean? "-- ah, but, I'm definitely a real person, though, not --"

        An empty headed pet? No, don't think about that now. She has some sort of inside information. He has some sort of tell he hasn't figured out. She'll figure out what he's thinking, and then...

        'Even despite everything I told you about him, you still sought him out.' This is the core of it, isn't it? The onmitsu plucks one of the long splinters from the wood surface with a muted crack, pressing the sharp end to an index finger and twisting absently. "I know, I should have --"

        ... she places her hands over his, just as the first drops of blood start to wet the wood beneath them.

        "...."

        ...The boy looks up at Umie, the two tones of his brown eyes just barely appearing beneath the flared strands of his grey hair. His hands are locked tight against the table, and he's not moving, but for that moment, he can't say anything to object, and there's no words he can think of to interrupt anymore.

        The boy's lips part slightly, and he breathes outward, a sword long sigh cutting into, and through the tension.

        "....I didn't seek him out," he admits. "I called him. I gave him me. He came. And .." he was afraid. And ... "... he won."

        An exact answer doesn't come, for Shiryuu is preoccupied with the steel he hears in her, something he can't even comprehend. Why would she react that way? Now the boy looks down again -- for an entirely different reason. He can hear the determination in her voice. The barest shake of his head, the wag of silver strands against the unspoken idea.

        There is a tremor in his hands, smoothed over quickly.

        "It's fine this way ... enough people have suffered because of my derelictions. No one should bear the burdens of my failures but me."


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        What was she going to say, as she looked at Shiryuu's face, with that look she has?

        The red shades in the brown in her eyes are visible here, in this lighting, just like the single dark beauty mark sitting wanly underneath her right eye, or the dust of pale powder on her face, or the tint of lipstick on her lips.

        It's a violent foil to the way Shiryuu's nails pull at the wood of the picnic table.

        What is he trying to prove? He's already proven--

        As Umie's hand grasps over Shiryuu's, and as blood begins to wet the splintered wood, Umie tries to turn them over in hers, in order to keep them within her own.

        The way of the Badb is blood, and suffering. Victory, and conviction. Whether you derive that from compassion, love, violence, or hate, all are worthy to grace the field.

        The Badb laughs in battle, and shrieks to foretell death, but is quiet in warmer matters of the heart.

        So, instead, Umie waits, determined to listen for the answer to come to her.

        And still, it surprises her when it comes. "You... called him...?"

        The Joker Killer's 'curse' (for lack of a better word) preys on a person's heart, she had theorized out loud to Joker, once. Back then, it was a matter of someone wanting to use it to kill someone else, a way to bypass the weight of taking another's life. "You...."
 
        This is not a ghost in front of Umie, right? A ghost wouldn't be able to bring Kurou over. They've just bought apples. She remembers how his fingers felt against her wrist, and how he checked her heartbeat.

        A ghost wouldn't have a heartbeat, would it?

        "Shiryuu..." she breathes, softly.

        Another impossible mirror across a chasm, as Shiryuu justifies what very well may be a wound to his soul, all over an attempt to correct an imbalance.

        "... why do you have to use those words."
        
        One hand raises from its accompanying pair, raising up to place itself against Shiryuu's cheek. If allowed, it will trace a thumbpad underneath his mis-matched eye, then rest there, against his cheek.

        "You're real to me."

        It makes no sense, to tell him that. Of course Shiryuu is real; he's right in front of her. He's definitely a real person; he said so himself.

        However, something about it makes her wonder if he's saying that to convince himself, more than anything. "Those times you came over... it wasn't about inspections, was it?"

         "You needed to be around someone who'd reaffirm those words."
 
 
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
 
        It is something Shiryuu Ryouhara will have to think on, the nature of what she means to say, what is said, and the chasm that exists between the two. There is so much left unsaid between them, he starts to realize. Thoughts fly past at the back of his skull, searching for the way, but...

        It's hard to look at her, as much as he wants to. Eyes settle on her lips as she speaks, the shade anchoring itself somewhere in the back of his mind. She's all made up for a moment other than this -- a moment searched for, and not found.

        The boy settles deeply into the volume of his sweater with guilt, as his eyes fix on the slices of apple on the table.

        The misericorde splinter drops to the table, as she pulls his hands into hers. "... There are others, with more impossible burdens," he says, his voice sliding underneath hers.

        His hands slowly curl, tightening at the wrist, trying to avoid staining her hands with blood. He can feel the wrap around her wrist, the one concealing her Mark. The brand of her ordeal. There is no right for the shihaisha to feel this way, when even a single person remains who's suffered.

        'You ... called him?' Another small, low breath.

        "There is no other way to locate the Joker Killer without compromising the safety of my people," he replies simply. It feels more correct to speak about it like this; calm, clinical, factual. "The mission would have been simple. I'm faster than he is. My weapons are superior to his." These two facts are not in dispute. It's just the third that hangs in his throat, unsaid.

        "But.."
        You failed, Shiryuu. That much is also fact.

        The boy is still staring at the apples, unwilling to look up. What can he really say, to explain what's happened? How does one even put words to being 'half of a person?' It's not right to even say this much. There must be a way to say something that will return that terrible smile to her face, to get her to say 'I'll shoot you right through the heart!' or something else infuriatingly annoying and sweet like that. There has to be a way out. To fix this. It--

        The sound of his name in her voice distracts him, a blink stirring up his train of thought once again, sending his ideas into the breeze like leaves. So preoccupied, he almost jumps out of his own skin when she touches his face, and his heartbeat thunders in his wrists like a stallion at full gallop.

        His eyes are as wide as dinner plates, when she's _that_ close, when he can feel her touch that explicitly. The tiny wires in his left eye glint as the pale brown flashes at her regard. It's almost impossible to tell which of his eyes is real and which is not until she's that close.

        '...You're real to me.'

        Self consciously, the boy reaches behind himself -- a tiny click can be heard. Immediately, the onmitsu lifts a triangle folded cloth to that eye, his wrist crossing hers temporarily as he presses it to the orbit, to the lacrimal duct.

        He's confused, when he doesn't see blood on the soft white. His eyes soften, his hand lowering along her wrist.

        "I..."

        What can he really say? There is nothing left in him to outright lie. Not to her. Not like this. It isn't right.

        "I'm not..." That's not appropriate. Um. "I'm a person who has to enact ... a terrible will on this world. There is no end to the number of crimes that will bear the name 'Ryouhara,' in the end, I suspect. And..."

        It almost feels wrong, to know her softly, like this.

        "... I needed to remind myself of the world it was all for."

        How do you describe being nothing more than a weapon to a person who's important to you? No... he decides. She doesn't deserve that ugly thing.

        "...I'm sorry," Shiryuu almost whispers.
        "This isn't the moment I wanted to give you, Umie."
 

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
 
        Umie's made up and dressed for another sort of moment, while never saying or asking what moment she actually wants, even going as far as to say what it isn't.

        This is not a date, but she's dressed for one; the outfit is casual, but Shiryuu's eyes would know better. The button-up blouse is nicer, tailored in a way that softly flatters her despite it being unbuttoned, the red tee underneath a nice accent. There's jewelry: the band at her throat, the charm bracelet on her left wrist, and the gold earrings, far more understated than the jade Shiryuu wears, especially when they're covered by the side bangs on either side of her head.

        They both are dressed nicely, in fact; Umie's eyes keep lowering to the cut of his turtleneck, or the swing of his matching jade earrings.

        It's an impossible dance, two people standing at opposite ends of a chasm, constantly remembering and forgetting it's even there.

        'There is no other way to locate the Joker Killer without compromising the safety of my people.' Shiryuu's reasoning is clinical and impossible to ignore; it's no wonder why it's been devised as a centerpiece for a plan for another group in order to lure Sudou. It's far better to set yourself up as the target, than continually putting out the fires Sudou creates.

        ... But would it really be that way if people see what it could cause, if Shiryuu's current state is not 'just' a product of his own fear and shame?

        It should have been simple to defeat a serial killer.

        "His Persona isn't. It shouldn't even act the way that it does; none of the Personas act the way the Old Maid's persona does. He was the first who was Marked, as best as I can tell. Me, the second. There could have been more before us, but if there are, they're either hiding, or dead." She's rambling, taking about things that don't matter. Who cases if Sudou was the first or the second or the sixth one who was Marked? It only makes sense in Umie's mind.

        She couldn't have been the one to 'invite' the presense, if Sudou was the first, but she could have been the one to bring it to the NWO.

        The tiny click confuses Umie, who briefly draws her hand back so Shiryuu can apply that folded cloth to his eye. Was he expecting blood? Or...

        'There is no end to the number of crimes that will bear the name 'Ryouhara,' in the end, I suspect.' But what for?

        "You could... break away, from the Order," Umie says, softly. "You don't have to work for them. I could help you, maybe, get contacts, or..."

        Umie doesn't know, and that's by design. She already knows more than she should, before Shiryuu even entered her life.

        There's more that she doesn't reveal, likely secrets so buried she can't even remember them-- the faces of officials and people in places of power, if just taller, younger, seen through the eyes of a young child. The things she saw, the concept of Gozen, the truth of what Shadows are, the half-remembered bits of prophecy of events that have already passed...

        Her lower eyelids rise, wrinkling against eyes that can't quite navigate the waters between the mischievous two-bunned devil Shiryuu is craving, and the person who fell asleep against Shiryuu that night, when the skies were still green.

        "You can't remember the moments you never grasp."

        This year's apples may be the last she'll ever taste.'
        So she should taste them while she still can.

        That hand goes to his cheek again, and Umie leans in, leaning across the table between them, leaning on her hand to better steady herself.

        It was much easier in her head to do this; the table's edge is cutting against her lower waist. What's more, her shifting dislodged the paper bag of apples, some of them spilling onto the wooden table.

        She can't bring herself particularly to care about anything, right now, as she selfishly, gently, presses her lips against Shiryuu's own.


<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        It is easier to think about things in that detached, ruthless abstract. The thinking of a shinobi -- absent any consideration but the goal ahead. The mission, if he wanted to be vain, puerile and perfectly accurate in that moment. A leader is someone who sanctions a mission. A leader is one who understands and knows the risks.

        A leader is one who finds a way.

        "He bleeds... that should have been enough."
        Shiryuu's mind levels on the affair, his conviction enough to slow his pulse, a fitful turn of his wrist in hers. There is some part of him that is the winds and rain of Akita, the storm that promised itself to the world -- and therein, there is nothing she says that soothes the fact that he should have been better.

        There is no word that soothes the fact that if he had laid down his life there, she would have at least been safe for a single minute of her life. And yet, the boy's mind cannot help but graze along the first reasons that that sick pit in his stomach opened, seeing the truth of the Joker Killer's Persona.

        He had something real to lose, for once in his life.
        'I wouldn't get to see you again.'

        And now here is the cloth laid flat against the table. His eye felt wet a moment before, and it ached when her hand dropped away. It was strange -- he hasn't used Kyotosaigan at all, so there was no reason for it to hurt, no reason for his eye to be wet if it wasn't bleeding. Irritation, he thinks, absently, self-consciously.

        So then why does his glance so closely fall on the fine lines of her hands? The fine details are a preoccupation for the boy, the hidden emotion in her voice when she offers him a way out. Help. A connection. A bond...?

        Nakamura had called her a target, back then.

        "But... it's ..not like that," Shiryuu starts, though a satisfactory explanation never reaches him, more than overwhelmed by the details of the moment going so, so far awry.

        Protecting her shouldn't be a burden she takes on, he thinks. His burden should not be hers. Not now. She said that she was the second...? Only the second to be subjected to all of the misery of that abominable 'it.' He's not being a good shepherd, by letting her take on this much of what he is. Doesn't she know enough? Hasn't she been tormented enough?

        Does he really care for her, if he lets her know this much?
        "...Why do I feel .."
        Why is he even talking?

        And then she touches him anew, and his mind runs out of thoughts to put to voice. To his merit, he tries, when he notices her leaning over, putting herself at risk of injury, two tones of brown skating downward to the apple bag as it tilts dangerously.

        "...hey," he warns, voice hushed in muted emergency. "You're going to ... --"

        The boy doesn't react with near the same amount of alarm, when that difficult woman presses her lips to his. Shock drives his eyebrows high, his immediate instinct to lean back cut off by ... he's not sure. A sudden and sharp hyperawareness of everything around him -- "mmn--" --leaves the boy to subconsciously try to catch at least some of the apples as they scatter across the table in the awkwardness of the moment. Hands blindly scrabble this way and that as apples mischievously roll this was and that. To the merit of his dexterity, he manages to catch onto one with his fingertips, just at the very edge of the picnic table, pawed at helplessly to try and prevent it from falling.

        And then she leans closer, and he realizes exactly what's happening.

        You can't remember the moments you never grasp..

        Fingertips slide against hers, a thumb wandering her wristline against the thin fabric of her fine blouse. The warmth of his sweater settles over her hand as he holds onto her, as if concerned that she might slip. Slowly, he forgets everything else.

        The golden apple falls off the table, as Shiryuu lets it drop, returning her affection with the lightest tilt of his head, bringing her closer to him.

        A hand is raised to run the length of her jawline, gingerly, as if even the slightest vagary might break the moment, and in that moment, his heart drums in him.

        It's him who breaks the kiss first, though it's only to rest his forehead against hers, sharing the intimate space between them, the slow breath of something much more. ".... s...sorry," he tells her, again, quieter than the nightfall still.

        He rests there with her, if allowed, if awhile.

        "....come with me tonight," he asks, quiet. "I..."
        "... I need to make reparations to you."
 
 
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        "I want it to end too. I said that I'd see his death." She closes her eyes.

        "The discarded sun lies buried in the hill.
        The spiral clockwork ticks to the inevitable climax.
        As the dragon rises from its slumber,
        the feast will begin anew."

        Something in the words she recites, feels deeper, reaches deeper, than they should. Maybe it's in the way her eyelids feel like they're twitching, itching from the inside out, or how the dark behind her eyelids feels like the afterimage of a shadowed room, something lurking further within the inverted shades.

        She truthfully only remembered a scant part of it, but when Umie concentrated, it flowed from her like water from a spring, as fresh as the day she first said it, which was--

        "Something bad will happen." It should sound like it's obvious; nothing the Old Maid is involved with will ever end *well*. Like Akechi had said, you didn't have to be an oracle to know that.

        "... But something bad *did* happen." A grasp of something, like a truth, a revelation, and it's gone.

        She waves a hand, letting it pass. "Is your eye okay? I didn't poke it with my thumb did I?" God help her if a corner of Umie's lips slide up, almost compulsively; she knows, for a fact, that her thumb did not stray anywhere close to Shiryuu's eye.

        It's not like that? What else could there be, but the NWO? What other business or reason would someone have, to do something to the degree that Shiryuu implies he needs to do?

        Why does she feel something for Shiryuu, out of everyone? At least, with Joker, she could just watch him from afar, and feel a rush. To feel something, yet never act on it, means you still feel something in the first place.

        It's far too dangerous, to go beyond that, she had reasoned.

        ..... and here she is, hearing the apples tumbling, feeling the picnic table's edge press against her waist, the wood splinters catching on the fabric of her blouse, not caring, grasping, and feeling Shiryuu's hand against her jawline.

        The kiss breaks, and the angle of their foreheads make a small, intimate pocket of space for them to share. She chuckles, breathy, still riding high on the thrill of it all. "Why are you apologizing. I'm the one who kissed you."

        She's closed her eyes, content, her lips smiling, breaking to show the fainted shadow of her relaxed mouth.

        Was that his first? Likely not, just like it's not been hers.

        It's the first time she's kissed someone who knows the basic secret that's formed herself, why she laughs when she runs during the Dark Hour, why a Dark Hour can exist at all, and why her Persona is a lady of the red fields that always, always smiles, if she's not shrieking.

        Umie Akabane is a creature formed of many things, and all those things, and those memories, came to here, in this silence.

        He asks her to come with him tonight.

        "Okay." She didn't even thing of what implications would lie behind those words, or even think about it.

        Well, except for one,

        ".... We're bringing the apples with us."


<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        "A discarded sun..." Shiryuu echoes. A dragon? Her words will be stuck in his head for a long time, allusions to things he has no preconcept of in the shadowed world. It's a seldom-felt sensation for the boy who took the role of leader, to be completely clueless about something, anything in the world.

        She said that she would see that man's death. That something bad will happen. Something bad -did- happen. Shiryuu's eye is aching again, but it's different this time, and he isn't sure why. Is it guilt? He could have dealt with this, solved everything. He should have. But..

        "... how do you prevent something that's ... already happened," the onmitsu wonders. Does it even make sense? Is it even okay?

        She brings up his eye, and the boy instinctively recoils, the cloth bunching in his hand in muted offense. He sees right through her pretext the moment she smiles. "Th-- it's nothing at all," he insists. He was just making sure. His guard rises and falls like the tide -- sparked by the phases of an itinerant moon, she who needles him in just, /just/ the right way.

        She needles him in other ways, too.

        Shiryuu is still breathless, his heartbeat a sharp, living rhythm in every thread of his veins, taking on a new canter beat when he's this close to her. The air feels different, in this space. Open sky, an open way. She lives in that world, doesn't she...

        He apologizes. And then she asks him why. "...sorry." he apologizes again, before breathing out. A sharp, short puff, an attempt to get his thoughts in line. I owe you more than this, he thinks, without ever actually saying it. But what's the feeling, somewhere deep in his blood?

        It's not the first time for Shiryuu. But there is a vast gulf of distance between the shihaisha and others -- what happened in a series of dimly lit back rooms overpainted with graffiti what feels like aeons ago was not 'synthesis,' no matter how hard Shiryuu could convince himself of it at the time. Dim, tiny, claustrophobic. How like 'that room' now.. he knew then that he couldn't really be close to anyone.

        Then ... what was ... the meaning of it, what transpired so long ago? And ... why is it different now?

        A slow, heady build of resolve finally leads Ryouhara to feel a tiny scintilla of the sensation in his blood, the same as when she first pressed into him. It's only after remembering a few seconds ago, a few weeks ago, that his mind finally mercifully relents to something approaching 'real.'

        He smiles, and this time it is not radiant, overpowering. It is an awkward, tight little thing, breaking past his dim expression of restrained introversion as she accepts his offer, as she imposes an order of her own. That particular smile, tiny, hidden and broken thing that it is, is there and gone in an instant.

        "I suppose," he accepts her proposal, with the smallest, featherlight laugh. "Carrying your apples is better than being kicked in the face.."
        Seriously, he had an intermittent nosebleed for days...


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        "... I don't know," Umie says, truthfully. "It was something I said when I was 11 or so."

        To... who?

        Why does she want to remember? It's the same as trying to remember what it meant to awaken: valueless. No truth can come from it, right?

        No truth--

        'How do you prevent something that's ... already happened.' "Things can have two meanings," Umie answers, with less of her usual, prideful pomp and more of the quiet rivers of knowledge that run underground. "Tarot cards can be playing cards, but also be used to find meaning in the future."

        But the impish little smile is still there,. primed and ready to deploy, just for Shiryuu.

        Just a special little gift for anyone that manages to inspire Umie Akabane in the right kind of way.

        "Are you sure it's nothing." Not even a question; her own brown eyes regarding him with a curious sort of glee at this shiny new potential piece of information about himself.

        He still holds his mysteries to her, and he can take pride in that, or despair.

        In that space of heartbeats lies the way to wild, open skies.

        Where a creature rejoices in spaces where nothing can take you, and you can fight back. A nest of corridors through the beating heart of collective humanity, where the shadows of humanity can be confronted. An atelier, setting a stage for a battle of wills, where the original soul is fated to slowly die, consumed by the Homunculus.

        .... A darked, neon-lit city, where cognitions feel aware of the boundaries of their being, but fight for the soul of someone trapped further within the egg of the world.

        But the delicate smile on Shiryuu's lips...

        She takes it in, holding it in her memory like a delicate blue-eyed nestling. It disappears, but she's not sad for it; knowing that she'll likely see it again.

        "What, it wasn't from enjoying that view?" Teeth glint more sharply in the widened space of that smile of her own.

        She'll help him with those apples; and, whether they split for the day or not after their (not)date, the two meet again, as promised.

         To say that Umie's heart is beating quickly is an understatement. .... just... what is she getting herself into?!?


<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        The grey-haired boy makes a face at Umie. Features screw tight, lips pursed in miniscule offense as he's nettled by the beast smiling at him so fetchingly. "Iiihh..."

        He can't help but stare just a little, when that wild creature rejoices, when she smiles at him just as she is, in the moment now.

        "You're a pesky person, Akabane..."

        He strides down a long, swaying bridge. Beneath him is a yawning chasm of nothingness, and above him hangs too low the abominable moon. There are those who fly, and those who are fated to walk a way, a path, a road. Every footstep is in the outline of those before them, and every footprint they leave is architect for the next person following, and everyone thereafter. Each step on the ancient wood planks is another line of a legacy, power, intellect and wisdom.

        There is a space between those places -- a liminal mist, where anything can be. If only he could find the way through it.

        It takes every iota of Shiryuu's will to let Akabane attend to the affairs of her day, and truthfully the only thing that reminds him to do so is that he had a more tangible obligation to Umie Akabane, which prompted a swift and brutal review of his own room, along with a few placed phone calls. A the very least, he did take a single apple with him.

        But then the sun went down, and Shiryuu had to leave to fetch her before he started to second-guess himself again.

        'Meet me at the Saikyo Line platform at ten o'clock. I'll come pick you up,' he said.

        He does come for her. When he arrived, the boy had completely changed his clothes. Still that feathered mop that got him compared to a vagrant in any other context, he'd swapped his hunter green turtleneck for a slate grey cable-knit half-zip, the zipper snugged around his throat. Earrings replaced with hanging obsidian bead chains and a matching thumb-ring, the boy is wearing his favorite mastermind JP Nikes by the time she sees him next. She'll note that this time he's not wearing a jacket, and his hip pack has been upgraded to a shoulder bag.

        "...Hopefully you didn't wait too long."
        He is careful to hide his relief that she's even there.

        So. Interestingly, the onmitsu has apparently had a room for quite some time at the Hotel Indigo on the other side of Shibuya Crossing, judging from the way the night staff seem to recognize him when he arrives. They are considerably more surprised that someone is with him this time.

        Somewhat less interestingly, the shinobi's room is also unreasonably high up in the tower. This results in a jaunt through polished halls and an unreasonably long elevator ride. An elevator ride that's not awkward at all given the events of the morning, and the fact that Shiryuu cannot avoid making crinkling noises while carrying the bag of apples for Akabane.

        Seriously, no matter how still he tries to be: crinkle, crinkle.
        He can hear his own heartbeat. Seriously, it's his, right?


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        'You're a pesky person, Akabane...'

        Umie's smile moves slightly, allowing it to wrinkle her nose devilishly. "I always appreciate when you recognize my efforts."

        ======

        The day went by woefully slowly. She had picked up a shift at Rafflesia Flower Shop to make the time pass more easily, but the flowers kept distracting her. It wouldn't be good to *bring* flowers to Shiryuu, that'd send the wrong message. Still, if a hypothetical Umie did so, what flowers would she get for this theoretical bouquet?

        And so on.

        "I was looking for something red, for my girlfriend. A biug statement piece," said the nervous businessman in front of her.

        "Roses," Umie suggests, automatically. "Red ones. That'd really send a message." Is she... a girlfriend, now? What is this?

        Getting ahead of ourselves, are we? chimes a cute, distracting whisper. You know what will happen, in the end.

        .....

        "... Miss?" The customer is still in front of Umie; she hadn't realized she had frozen in place. "... I, uh, think the roses would be good?"

        Umie continues on where she left off, a skill honed through constant practice. "Right, let me get those for you."

        She is definitely not getting any bouquets, hypothetical or no. Her messaging is already suspect.

        ======

        The components of Umie's outfit are more or less the same, though the blouse had been exchanged for a loose windbreaker instead. Not much beyond that has changed, though her hairbuns look more loose, having been through a day of retail and not much done about it aside from a quick combing through.

        Umie shakes her head. "No, I just got here, it's fine." He's dressed nicely, in a completely different outfit. How many does he have? Or maybe, it was because he was meeting her.

        Where the Farmer's Market managed to still have Umie in her element despite them both being new to it, the upscaled building of the Hotel Indigo has her more quiet, keeping close to Shiryuu.

        Suspicious, to have someone like her tagging along, Umie imagines. The Umie of before would be missable here, as she would blend in. Tired-looking, blonde dyed hair, red nails... the Umie of now would certainly stand out.

        She tries not to think about it.

        The long elevator ride does the thinking for her, allowing her to be aware of her pounding heart.

        (Can Shiryuu hear it, or is she hearing his?)

        The scent of the florist shop still lingers on her. Will Shiryuu think this is some weird kind of perfume? While it's not unpleasant, it's also... a message.

        ".... I got off work from the Rafflesia Flower Shop, so, I... may be smelling like it for a while," she says, quietly.
 

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
 
        In truth, Ryouhara doesn't seem any more out of place than he usually does in either environment. The only curiosity is that he never seems to attract more attention that is necessarily due -- he has a habit of fading into the background, no matter what he's wearing or what he's even doing.

        At least... until he's with her.

        Is that a glance stolen by the attendant on the way up? It's almost instinctive, the way Shiryuu subconsciously takes her by the arm, pulling her closer in that moment as if to...

        ...what? What's the purpose of it? To protect her? To make sure everyone knows she's..

        It's uniquely one of those kinds of bad ideas that will keep Shiryuu second guessing himself through the next week.

        And now they're in an elevator ride that Shiryuu swore did not feel quite so long yesterday or the day before. Not that he's used it as often as one would think -- Kyotosaigan does have quite a few ancillary benefits during the Dark Hour, and one of those is being able to skip dumb situations like this.

        But making Akabane climb twenty flights of stairs is probably not the greatest way of making reparations.

        If she looks a little worse for wear at the stretch of the day, it'll be the first Shiryuu actually notices -- out of character, for the boy who insists her ceiling is on the verge of failing and killing everyone in her apartment. It's in that vein that Shiryuu is very intensely studying the row of buttons on the elevator for no real reason in what is possibly the world's most awkward silence ever invented. Crinkle. Crinkle. Damn it.

        Somewhat bravely, Umie is the first one to break the silence. 'I ...may be smelling like it for awhile.' "Oh," Shiryuu remarks, doing his best to remain neutral on the matter. "It was nice. I thought it was ..." he sounds a shade disappointed, but quickly reins it in.

        You thought it was _what?_ Get it together, Shiryuu.

        A light puff buffers the space between this awkward stretch and that. Suddenly, and without due notice, the boy begins to crinkle like mad, switching the paper bag to a space just settled between the crook of his elbows. He's actually fairly good at it, accessing both of his hands at the same time, revealing a leather bangle on one wrist and a silk rope tie on the other when his sleeves drop. The boy links the first two fingers of his first hand with the last two fingers of his second, raising a modified thunderseal mudra, shutting his eyes.

        He makes a tiny -hyah!- sound. It's like a gunshot in the quiet.

        ...and then, without explanation, goes back to holding the bag.

        Another few seconds pass as Shiryuu much more smoothly transfers the bag back to his left arm. Crinkle. Crinkle. Crumple. ... he pauses.

        "... I like it, it's fine," he tells her. Again. As if it beared repeating.

        Mercifully, the elevator ride does end. Traipsing through a hallway is not so brutal.

        ------

        Shiryuu's room unlocks with a little -click- of an electronic keycard. He has one of the east facing rooms on the tower, and is clearly paying a premium for the floorspace, although a stunning 'none of it' seems to have been of use until relatively recently.

        The room is a single spaced flat, not entirely dissimilar in size to Umie's own studio. However, that is where the differences abruptly end.

        Even a cursory glance at Hotel Indigo's booking sites would tell that the room has simply been torn down to something just shy of the bare studs. Any vestige of the hotel's signature warm persona has been ruthlessly stripped bare, reorganized for floor space and utility. Area rugs missing, artsy wall hangings removed, missing television. The boy's sword sits in what used to be portrait brackets above his bed, a black sheathed saya with a red bag folded neatly on a hook installed just below it. At the foot of his bed, there is a locked clockwork (literal exposed clockwork...is it just an aesthetic?) chest, sealed with a paper tag.

        On the south wall, a little spartan desk sits, with a laptop and the primary source of lighting in the room: a spinning orrery lamp, spraying the room with an almost eye-watering amount of neon LED light, flooding the area with curving auroral blues and pinks and purples. A large laptop is open, playing a vivid dance bassline, with a feminine voice laid over it. The effect is dispelled almost immediately when Shiryuu hits the overhead lights, clipping the neon effect short, and, recognizing the song, goes over to wake the screen up and shut it off almost immediately.

        It gets as far as ~ show you the things I can do for you. Don't make this one dimensional -- ~ and then it's off, and banished to the digital AEther. The background has a stylized picture of a silver fox on it. Dominating the desktop is an array of folder icons, speaker icons and curved, glowing icons. One of the glowing ones is open, but minimized. He doesn't seem to pay it much more mind than that. ".... sorry," he apologizes again, for unknown reasons.

        However, what is glaringly out of place in the layout is the very intentional way that two seats have been set out that almost certainly weren't there before. It is a -tiny- bistro table falling into the vacuous middle of the room. Beneath it, a comically small plastic cooler. On the top, a stacked set of plates, a few utensils, and a sheathed black knife and cutting board. A pristine mountain snow lotus, potted in black, has been placed on the corner of the table, authoritatively. It is absolutely not something that came from the flower shop.

        Then and only then does Shiryuu think to set down the bag of apples, next to the lamp. Finally, the demonic crinkling is no longer his responsibility. Instead, the boy moves to step behind the only piece of furniture that doesn't seem to be aligned to an exact grid pattern throughout the room -- a weirdly colorful futon, as he addresses the hard drapery panels that are closing off the window. A window that spans almost the entire wall. Shiryuu notices the discrepancy of the futon almost immediately, and in the process almost trips over it. "Gh-- ngh..!"

        He's busy navigating the moment of indecision over whether to open the window first or move the futon so it's straight by the time he realizes what's happening. "Ah -- please, take a seat," he says, without specifying where, because he really did stub his toe and it really does hurt. His nature won out -- he's absolutely straightening the futon first.

        (Nevermind the flower. It's still not a date.)


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        'I thought it was ...' Oh no, oh no. Shiryuu, you fool.

        "You thought it was perfume I put on just for you?" Umie slowly turns her head towards Shiryuu, head tilted, eyes twinkling mischeviously. "My, my. I could've said nothing and pretended. However, you seemed like someone who'd be sensitive to smells on top of everything else."

        Then, quiet.

        Umie adjusts her bracelet, the cord making a tiny jingle barely heard above the din of the elevator motor.

        Then--

        "... what did you just do?" Umie asks, eyes wide as she cranes her neck back towards him.

        There's a brief softening of her gaze as she recongizes the silk cord bracelet, confirming it with her eyes instead of just by touch alone. The leather band is there as well; a fashion statement? It's hidden though-- maybe a watch? Or something of meaning to him.

        'I like it, it's fine.' She opens her mouth to say something, then quietly nods instead, her cheeks turning slightly pink again.

        With a click of Shiryuu's keycard, they enter the apartment. Umie glances around, trying to soothe the way her heart is beating, while projecting an aura of calm.

        It's... not that dissimilar to the size of Umie's apartment. Perhaps the difference is in the view and the furnishings?

        ... That is, the furnishings that'd be there, if they hadn't been removed and replaced with... well, she recongizes that sword, for one. The clockwork, not so much. Maybe it's a design choice, but then again, there's that paper charm(?) on it.

        Of course she's over there immediately, squatting down and peering at it (thankfully not touching it, notably).

        There's a desk, and a laptop, and... ah, so that's where all the swirling lights are coming from.

        She stands, as Shiryuu apologizes again. "What," Umie starts with a slight smirk, the slight show of teeth stained white from the swirling LED lights. "

        It definitely makes a different kind of impact, despite so much being taken down.

        But what takes on more of Umie's attention, if only now that she's eased into the room is the odd addition of the two seats and the bistro table, set with many items. And next...

        "Whoah..." Umie says, as she sets up to the potted snow lotus. "... It's..." She prods it experimentally with an index finger. "It's real? It's beautiful..."

        Her awe is interrupted by Shiryuu nearly falling over the futon. "H-hey, you okay there?" Then, as if the concern was too obvious...

        She has to say something to diminish it. "... I'm not sure we'd be able to get a doctor up this high, after all."

        That'd be a way to make a not-date memorable.
 
 
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
 
        Absolutely not messing it up tonight, Shiryuu.

        Despite being relatively cavalier about the act in the elevator ('no need to be alarmed, it's just my ninjutsu,' the boy would have told her,) Shiryuu is much less forthcoming about the chest at the foot of the bed, which is a black steel and leather reinforced thing, ominous in the way its gears interlace to slide together two fat iron battens in place with four smaller iron bolts, each as thick around as a man's thumb. Thick bands of leather secure the edges of the chest, and it's lined in small carbide tips at its leading edges, with kanji seals acting as tamperproofing. 'KIN' is written on each, a forbidding kanji limned in ink scrawl all up and down the edges as they seal over the opening top of the lid.

        Inspecting it, it looks like it's strong enough to be thrown out the window and survive the fall.

        'What,' Umie smirks at him, and Shiryuu makes a face at her in turn. "I'll have something appropriate for you in a minute," he says. Then he promptly almost dies on moving a futon.

        "I... if this was enough to take me out," he grouses, but never finishes his thought. Once Shiryuu has the futon muscled straight, the boy leans his hands across the backrest, catching just a bit of his breath while trying not to make it too obvious.

        Then he turns to the drapery panels. While the window itself doesn't open, there are hard blackout panels that shut off the outside daylight during the day. These he slowly wheels open, one at a time.

        "Anyway. They're from the clan's compound in Nagano," Shiryuu explains, as each panel slides into eachother with an audible click. "The Ryouhara claims the lotus as its symbolic flower. However, Mount Iizuna is not close enough to the Chikuma's basins to reliably host an aquatic garden every season, so these are regularly grown on the peaks instead..."

        It's all rather matter of fact for the boy, a rote repetition of memory. The matter changes once the window is clear, however. The boy clearly is paying _just_ for the view: A dominating view of the Tokyo skyline, where each building is distant enough to appear like a Christmas tree, gatherings of a hundred twinkling lights apiece. The room has the east face of the tower, which can see Shibuya Crossing not far away at all, shot through with skyways and people milling about the crosswalks below, overlit by fierce blazons of the corporate tower spectaculars, advertising soft drinks, internet companies, the latest shows, and banks.

        Against Ryouhara, the distant light glows like a halo against him, and the boy's voice trails off as he stares. It's only when the flicker of the neon orrery catches his attention in the reflection, reminding him that she can see his reflection in the window.

        Without looking, his mouth sets in a thin, quiet line.
        "....I thought you'd appreciate seeing one."

        Luckily, Ryouhara seems a little reticent to shut off the lights, and the warm overhead does a lot to quell the neon rave audacity of the electric arcs that shape his figure as he steps past her. Laptop finally addressed, the boy opens a module program, setting a beat synthesizer. 88 BPM... kicks every two measures.. minimal open hihat... set to a low choir loop with a few strings.

        There. It takes only a few seconds, but there is a tiny little beat strumming from the computer's speakers, with a low choir hum set to something pretty sounding in the back. The volume is low enough to be unobtrusive, but the beat is enough that it takes Shiryuu's mind off his own heartbeat.

        "That'll go until the Dark Hour," the boy with the grey hair remarks ruefully as he finally takes his seat on the other side of the table, with a tiny -hup.- "...Or until the program crashes," he thinks aloud, rueful.
 

<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        'No need to be alarmed, it's just my ninjutsu.' What an utterly normal thing to say.

        "Mmn." Umie's dark eyelashes lower as she touches a curled finger to her bottom lip.

        Much of Umie's teasing is due to who it is, opposite her. She knows he's powerful, and that, in a moment, he could quickly overwhelm her, being someone with skills that can work outside of the Dark Hour.

        However, as a counterpoint: she just can't help herself.

        Just like now, when Shiryuu makes that face., However, then, whatever cheeky remark she was going to make had gone out the window (well, not literally) the moment she saw that snow lotus.

        "Beauty in adversity," Umie notes quietly, imagining it in the harsh sun of the craggy mountain peak.

        This one sits in a pot instead in this needle of a mountain, with a view just as expansive, as Shiryuu works the curtains back to expose the view.

        "...." Perhaps it's just as satisfying to see the sometimes sardonic Umie be too in awe to speak, as the skyline is revealed.

        It's like seeing a sea of lights, or a mountain range of humanity, skyscrapers lining the sky like the lines on a readout for a track in a music program.

        And against it, the ghost of Shiryuu, outlined in the white of the lights.

        She does, indeed, see Shiryuu's reflection. And he hers, as her eyes trail across his shoulders with a brief gentling of her gaze.

        Umie glances back towards the potted mountain lotus, noting the eerie beauty of the leaves, the pale veins of the white petals, the black stamen in the middle.

        Like the white of his haori, the petals soft as his lips felt.

        Her heart's beginning to pound again. She gathers back a blonde bang from her face, biting her lip.

        .....

        It's enough that Umie lets Shiryuu work in peace, taking a seat in one of the chairs as she gazes out into the city lights beyond.

        By the time Shiryuu takes a seat, she's managed to calm herself back down, though the way her right hand had tended to her red bracelet is an immediate tell.

        Umie chuckles. "I appreciate all the thought you placed into everything, especially when there wasn't a lot of time to do so."

        She looks over the skyline, then back to Shiryuu, leaning in just slightly, as if to share an embarrassing secret. "I wonder what it'll look like, when the Dark Hour hits. I don't think I'd ever seen it from this high up."

        Excitement peeks through in her voice, even if she keeps the volume of her voice low.
 

<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
 
        "Aa," Shiryuu confirms for her. "Though it is not the same as the lotus that grows in the lakes, both symbolize the purity of struggle, and the founder of the clan's journey..."

        It seems as if there's a little more to it than that, but Shiryuu trails off thoughtfully, watching her in the glass. He's quiet as well. Yet, the young man is very proper when he moves, from the formal way he strides across the room, to the way he sits, legs lined up exactly with the table, hands settling on his knees as he tilts his head.

        Gone is some of the anxiety and tension from before, replaced with a steady glance, though there is always trepidation, some manner of guilt, as if meeting her eyes was something he was simply not allowed to do, and it's a sheer feat of will that he even manages it without his cheeks warming.

        Was it his imagination, or was she just looking at him, the same way..?

        It is strange, for the shihaisha to meet her in this way. There is a certain formal honesty in how he behaves, nodding once as she sits. "It's not strange to expect of a ... person," he tells her simply, though he still pauses on the last word, the ghost of consternation crossing his face as if unsure it was the correct one to use.

        "People such as us live on the edge of life and death every night, and with respect to everything that's transpired... I owe you this much, at least."

        !

        As his eyes dip downward, the onmitsu seems shot out of his reverie, a sudden startle causing the boy to reach beneath the table, opening the tiny cooler. "One second." Oh, look, he's produced the apple he took with him. One of the Tsugaru, the pinkish red tone set on the tiny 'Mike panchi!!' cutting board set on the table. He had it packed with cool packs, so the apple's chilled. The boy takes a moment to separate out the little glass plates he had sent up, and unsheathes the small black lacquered tanto set alongside the board. Noticeably, the tanto's saya is carved with the same symbol that appears on the back of his haori, when he's wearing it; three leaves in the wind. This he uses to slice the apple, with about a solemn an expression on his face as possible.

        And Shiryuu, somewhat expectedly, is extremely good with a knife.

        He goes about this in an exacting way. First, the boy cuts the sections out of the apple, into crisp fourths. Then, he cuts into the skin of the apple, making first lateral slits, then longitudinal slits. He's fast, so the warmth of his hands don't warm the apple overmuch, but each alternating square of skin is plucked off of the apple, before he clips out the seed core with a quick notch. When it's done, there are two quarters of the apple on each small plate, their skin peeled in an alternating ichimatsu checkerboard pattern. The tanto is wiped off with a kerchief, and sheathed before being set aside.

        "... It's ... something to see," Shiryuu explains of her admission, while cutting. The Dark Hour has its own implications for him lately, but it's not a subject he gets into, a small flash of a smile betraying him hearing the restrained excitement in her voice, a scintilla of tension draining from the pride of his shoulders. Something about it puts him at ease.

        "...Of course, you don't have to, but..."

        Shiryuu offers one of the plates to Umie, sliding it across the tiny bistro with both hands and head bowed in deference. He is absolutely not looking at her when he speaks. He is trying not to get distracted about what happened the last time they were at a table like this. All of it. Even when she.. no, don't get distracted, Shiryuu. Make sure she understands the situation.

        "... if you want, you can stay and see it..." ... with me.
        It's now alarmingly clear that he thought to leave her just enough time to be taken home, if she wanted to be. Or..


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        The purity of struggle. Beauty in adversity. It's a foreign concept, thinking of a clan, much less a clan's founder, enough to enshrine certain objects or concepts as being related to it as much as the kanji that lies within a surname.

        While red lies in Umie's own surname, it isn't what led to her picking red as a favorite color, anymore than the kanji of 'wing' foretold Badb. One could look at Umie's own first name for a reference that's more direct, but even then, was it the knowledge of that kanji that spawned the Badb?

        Or was it the concept of the crow, the raven, or the blackbird that lies at the heart of all?

        Further still is the idea of the shihaisha, what it means, or why Umie should hold it in a different light, rather than treat it as any meaningless, ancient title.

        It's the smaller things she respects, the details, the story that lies within. A clan's name is nothing, but a snow-petalled lotus that blooms on a mountain grounds it in something she can understand and grasp.

        'Of course it's not your imagination, I kissed you,' would be Umie's natural remark, if the shihaisha had spoke his thoughts aloud.

        A shihaisha that leaves the 'us' vague, found Umie imagines herself being included in that, placed as an equal, her struggles quietly acknowledged, without drawing attention to them. (Had it been any more direct, she would have refused to respect it.)

        He could have equally meant himself, recognizing his own unique circumstances as a reason to place value in the present, as the future may not be so kind.

        The sweetest apple you will taste will be the one you taste in the present, being not a memory, or an expectation of the future.
        Umie's attention is spent on the chilled Tsugaru apple, the setting of the glass plates, the shine of the black lacquer tanto and its symbol, unsheathed in front of her. She watches Shiryuu's hands cut the apple with care, the checkboard pattern unfolding in front of her fascinated eyes.

        She doesn't dare move to take the offered plate until the tanto is wiped and sheathed, not wanting to disrupt what feels like a ritual.

        Especially seeing how he offers that glass plate before her, the apple slice beautifully checked.

        'So you set this up as a carrot on a stick, just to lure me in,' she would normally say, with a smirk.

        The weight of the plate shifts as she takes it, in the next second giving her answer.

        "... I do," Umie says, down glancing at Shiryuu, eyelids lowered slightly over dark eyes. "I'd love nothing more."


<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.

        It's truthfully hard for Shiryuu to avoid thinking about. Is it even okay that he let her kiss him like that? Is it really okay to have let things advance that far...?

        Is it okay to have ...liked it?
        Is it ... the feeling of a bond?

        The subtext hangs thick enough in the air to be cut with a knife. Unfortunately, Shiryuu is no longer so armed, as he's already offered the ichimatsu-giri Tsugaru formally and sheathed his tanto.

        Tension runs in his veins, in the median between the two roads he offers her, his own plate almost neglected as the boy takes great care to dispense with the cutting board. There is something desolate just at the edge of the silence, tense and ready.

        In a certain manner of thinking, someone like him doesn't really deserve to exist in this moment. But he can ignore it, for just a moment, if he remembers that keeping his word is more important.

        All of this transpires between this second and that. Just enough time for the boy to set the cutting board beneath the table, on top of the cooler. Just enough time for his hands to tense up just so.

        'I'd love nothing more.'

        His smile is hardly very radiant at all -- a gentle line, weak by any reasonable estimate, but worn for longer than the second or two betraying him prioe. He thinks he is satisfied -- he thinks that's what that feeling is.

        It's not.

        "...I'm glad," he says, leaving the rest unsaid. Instead, he takes a moment to look down at his own apple. He doesn't know the type, truthfully, or what to expect, but the design is nice enough. "... I'm told," he starts, absent, "that this is the best pattern for luck." Superior to the swan or the rabbit, it's stated, which he also learned to cut just today.

        He breaks the apple with a tiny pop in his hands, instinctively right along a crisp line, though it's very clear he's not thinking about anything of the like, as the boy presses the two halves back together, a second later.

        "And.."
        Is it fair to just .. not tell her?

        "...It's something.." the boy starts to think, staring at the apple.
        "...I'd like to try again, sometime. Thank you."


<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.

        Is it okay?

        Umie never asked herself that, only if this is a chance she could pass up.

        When a boy in front of you feels so pale, and you remember the way that same boy gathered you against him that one night, and how his hand touched your Mark without a single flinch, his thoughts centered on you...

        And how he quietly confessed how scared he was, that he wouldn't be able to see you again-

        When those feelings are inside you as well, you kiss that boy.

        And you tell him you'd love nothing more than to watch the Dark Hour with him, because it's the truth.

        "It seems you're pretty skilled with a knife outside of battle as well," Umie notes, with some humor. "I definitely couldn't do something like that."

        Shiryuu breaks the apple with an audible pop, and Umie is delighted.

        And then, as if not thinking, he presses the two halves together, commenting how it's something he'd liked to try again, sometime.

        Ah ha.

        Shiryuu will definitely notice the small curlling smile on her lips, that gleeful, terrible expression that can only hint at the carnage of what's to come.

        She leans in close, merely a foot away from him as she reaches up, a gentle hand brushing a bang from his forehead, trying her best not to startle him.

        "... All you need to do is ask."

        It's a invitation, in every sense of the word, but also a reminder, as that expression softens.

        ".... You won't disappear tonight, Shiryuu. I'll be here. So sleep well."

        Half or whole, Shiryuu is here.

        And so is Umie.